South Australian IoT satellite developer, Myriota is to acquire satellites and ground stations from Canadian company exactEarth, one of its early shareholders and whose satellite it was using to develop its service.
Myriota’s wholly owned subsidiary, Myriota Canada will acquire four ExactEarth satellites, a global network of ground station assets and their associated spectrum licenses for $CA600,000 ($A700,000), some of which ExactEarth will re-invest into Myriota.
ExactEarth invested $A2 million into Myriota at its foundation in 2015 when it was spun out of the University of South Australia. Other shareholders were UniSA Ventures and founders Dr Alex Grant and Dr David Haley. exactEarth’s CEO Peter Mabson is chairman of Myriota and will continue in that role.
Myriota says the acquisitions will increase its capability to deliver low-cost, low-power, secure direct-to-orbit satellite connectivity for IoT.
Myriota is also building its own satellites. In February 2019 it named Californian company Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems as the developer of its planned satellites.
Myriota CEO and co-founder Alex Grant, said the acquisition would add industry-leading capabilities in satellite operations, engineering and spectrum management from an experienced team, and fast track the company’s development.
Mabson described the divested assets as “non-core” and said the move would help the company achieve its goal of being a pure-play data services business.
“This transaction allows us to maintain access to AIS [automatic identification system] data from the satellites to support our service, and will enable us to focus on the large market opportunity in front of us with our second-generation constellation.”
